Ontology-Mediated Querying with Horn Description Logics

Abstract

An ontology-mediated query (OMQ) consists of a database query paired with an ontology. When evaluated on a database, an OMQ returns not only the answers that are already in the database, but also those answers that can be obtained via logical reasoning using rules from ontology. There are many open questions regarding the complexities of problems related to OMQs. Motivated by the use of ontologies in practice, new reasoning problems which have never been considered in the context of ontologies become relevant, since they can improve the usability of ontology enriched systems. This thesis deals with various reasoning problems that emerge from ontology-mediated querying and it investigates the computational complexity of these problems. We focus on ontologies formulated in Horn description logics, which are a popular choice for ontologies in practice. In particular, the thesis gives results regarding the data complexity of OMQ evaluation by completely classifying complexity and rewritability questions for OMQs based on an EL ontology and a conjunctive query. Furthermore, the query-by-example problem, and the expressibility and verification problem in ontology-based data access are introduced and investigated.